FanHouse Marcus Denmon

The year 2009 will be remembered as one without a Cinderella. The year college basketball's biggest brothers took a baseball bat to her glass slipper and turned it into a bucket of shards.

And, by any trick of math, they would be right. There was no plucky mid-major from a town your map has never heard of and no Cinderella with a seed as big as your shoe size.

But there was a darling. And it was Missouri, the star of this tournament.

GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Marcus Denmon already had his one shining moment, that freeze-frame picture to keep for a lifetime, long after the highlights of this NCAA tournament fade.

The Missouri freshman snagged an inbounds pass Thursday night, sidestepped to avoid a hand waving in his face, and let history fly. From three-quarters out, with the halftime buzzer about to blare, Denmon's fling dropped flawlessly through the twine to put his team up by 13, and from that second on Mizzou knew it had been touched by something special, something only a handful of teams get to experience as March rushes to a close.

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